


Scarborough Fair

by gentle_herald



Category: Henry V - Shakespeare
Genre: Generals order their soldiers to kill, Henry being manipulative, M/M, Songfic, Three of [them] in that marriage so it was a bit crowded, and to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten, i guess, simon and garfunkel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 16:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15004748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentle_herald/pseuds/gentle_herald
Summary: I never met a girl at Scarborough Fair...Fluellen and Gower and Henry are bound together by an impossible love and an impossible war.





	Scarborough Fair

Fluellen is well aware how mixed the moral fibre of an army can be. He himself caught Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol hiding behind the lines at Harfleur; he knows the purpose of the camp-follower women even if he has never felt even the slightest desire for their services. In all his study of armies, he has learned that only the highest ranks are a brotherhood of holy knights; the infantry is a thrown together pottage of idlers, drunks, rapists, city low lifes, and the occasional honest tenant farmer. They can fight ferociously and even loyally if given the right direction, but discipline is a nightmare unless it is tightly enforced. He also knows that the chronicles only discuss generals and their tactics. What he knows of the practicalities of warfare he has learned from long experience in the King's service. 

Nonetheless, from those imperfect building blocks the divinely anointed King must call forth an army to protect the realm.

Henry is the king Fluellen has been waiting for, without knowing it, his whole life. He briefly wonders if it's entirely proper to think so ill of Henry, the king-that-was, but he consoles himself that there had been nothing wrong about Henry – he was simply uninspiring. Fluellen did his duty at Shrewsbury, would have died rather than join the rebels, but it was only duty. Fervent to be sure, but something about the current King Henry's curious mix of personal piety fierce courage speaks to Fluellen's soul. He supposes, half-jokingly, that it's the Welsh blood that makes the difference. 

At Southampton, he sees the King from a distance – and then Henry meets his captains personally and Fluellen, not normally a bashful man, trips over his words. Henry is grave, kind, exudes royal command. Fluellen is smitten. 

The deeper they go into France the more the men's mood sours and turns to profit. Past Harfleur, some thief is hung as an example; it slows but doesn't stop the rate at which village women are assaulted and food and valuables stolen. Henry would be livid if he knew, Fluellen thinks. Unless he does and is too worn down or too afraid of embittering his army to take action.

It no longer surprises Fluellen to think of the King's strategy this way.  It seems Jamy took his opinions on proper tunneling to Henry because ever since, Fluellen has been on the King's council for military matters. Not its inner circle, of course, but more needed than he ever dreamed of being. 

 

At the end of October, Fluellen knows his troops are desperate. The French are closing in, the men are in poor condition from fast marches in the muck, and winter threatens to trap them in hostile countryside unless they reach Calais soon. If the French don't kill them first: prospects in pitched battle are grim. 

Still, he would fight the Red Dragon for the King when he rebuffs the French herald. Fluellen doubts many of the soldiers would, and not even all the captains. He is furious. How can they not see how brave Henry is, what an inspiring leader, that the cause is greater than their insignificant selves. He hates the rot in the ranks, the selfishness, the dissension. Why can't they understand?

The pouring dark brings the dread of tomorrow closer and pushes the wider world away. The men huddled around one fire than another couch admissions of fear in bawdy jokes or mumble them in prayer to the flames. What will happen to their wives and families if they are killed, maimed? What of their immortal souls, dying unshriven? What comfort can there be for the nagging suspicion that they are on an atheist's crusade, a vain campaign that spends lives as if they were shillings from John of Gaunt's treasure house? 

 

Here are soldiers, thinks Fluellen as he stumbles through the dark camp towards his tent. They are a ragtag, disreputable mob, but they have given their lives into the King's keeping. Will he spend them wisely? Their fears, faced with pain and death, are basic, human, decent things. Each man may have sinned separately, but it is the King who will bear the guilt of sending them suddenly en masse to Purgatory – or worse. 

The King – does he realize any of this? And the treacherous, logical conclusion: the King is a brilliant strategist. He must know, but does he care? While Fluellen can't imagine the King bluntly disregarding his people's welfare, perhaps sacrifices might be made in extremis. His military texts have included long marches and starving armies; he has taken part in a few himself. He knows full well that a leader needs to push on. 

But that isn't really what troubles the men. They want to know why they are in France, whether all the pious cant about succession and Salic Law and the Black Prince matter to the King – and why they should care how many crowns and titles he gilds himself with. 

Either Henry's knightly virtue or the men's safety – each destroys the other, at least the way things are now. Fluellen has always believed in the King, while the foibles of his fellow man perplex and anger him. But on this campaign, leading soldiers, he has been forced to see the basic goodness in them, and if not goodness, then understandable motivation. This begs respect for their lives, which requires an efficient plan of battle and a valid premise for the war. Fluellen knows the King will execute the first perfectly. The second is drowning in a pit of mud. 

He trips over the guy-rope of his tent, half buried in the sludge. Curses in Welsh. Gower is waiting patiently for him inside, re-polishing his knife. Fluellen says nothing. He strips to his shirt and climbs into his bedroll without even making eye contact. It's odd how a not insubstantial man can be so profoundly alone in a tiny tent. 

Gower sets the weapon aside, a belt knife for close gutting work, if the French get past the bowmen. He watches Fluellen lying on his back, staring at the grey canvas in the dim light. 

"What is it?"

"The men are afraid."

"Been afraid since they left Southampton. What's new?"

"I am too," Fluellen says, miserably. "I'm afraid they're right about this war. About the King – that he's just playing chess with our lives."

"But of course he is!" Gower sounds genuinely shocked that Fluellen would assume differently. Fluellen's dread grows. Gower is nearly always right about grim things like those. You can count on Gower to know what everyone else is thinking.

"But," says Fluellen. "But how can the King be so callous?" And more quietly, "He made me believe."

Gower is undressing; he pulls his bedroll close to Fluellen's and gets in. In the silence, he pinches out the candle. Fluellen tentatively leans closer until his head is in the crook of Gower's neck. 

His world is spinning too fast, fast enough that things might fall off the edges like spatters of clay from a potter's wheel. Things like his idea of himself as a loyal man. Like the faith that urges trust in the King and grounds his whole way of being. He feels somehow defiled by his uncertainty and wishes, desperately, for holy innocence. 

Gower says to the dark and Fluellen's hair, "Here's how it is for a man not quite as high minded as you but still loving, honest. Farmer. Goes to Scarborough Fair to sell his wool, sees a pretty girl. Comes back next month, sees her again. She talks to him this time. He falls in love, they're married by Michaelmas, and next year there's a baby along with the lambs. Now a man like this, when the King calls an army he goes. He wants to come home to his wife and the boy. He wants healthy sheep and customers to buy his wool. If the Frogs invade, he'll fight to the end to protect his family, his friends, his village. Some are proud to be English, but push harder and you'll find it's pride in where he was born and bred, in his mam and his da. Not – usually – the King, so a war for something high and noble with nothing to save the family from means less."

Facetious because it's all he can cling to, Fluellen says, "I never met a girl at Scarborough Fair." 

As if that explains it all. As if his matrimonial arrangements, or lack thereof, have caused his extraordinary dedication. 

Gower has to use every muscle not to physically recoil at the implications. Not while he's holding Fluellen. Who is this monster of a King who – contrary to what Fluellen likes to call the true disciplines of the wars – used an impossible love to bring Fluellen to this?

Fluellen is still talking. "But, look you, I met a farmer, and we went to war together. And – oh," he says softly, and as angry as he wants to be Gower can't feel anything but pity for this impulsive Welshman who gives his heart away too freely. He guesses, bleakly, that he will always be the dike protecting Fluellen from his idealism, his blindness of the heart. 

"Oh," his voice is almost a whisper, husky and about to weep. Gower pulls him closer as he turns over, cradling Fluellen against his chest and cursing the King. 

Sunrise is gaudy, brittle orange over the line of forest at the top of the black hill. The trees are black too, bones peeking through where the rotting flesh has begun to fall away. 

Men stumble from their beds and drink it in, fumbling with soaked buckles and straps in the icy mud. It's nearly too late in the year for a campaign, but it is the King's way to push men and chance to the breaking point just for one more castle taken, one town further. 

Resentment would be comforting. Anger would bring much needed heat. But grief for a dream betrayed and self-loathing for building it out of illusions is all Fluellen has. Henry is still beautiful. As he strides along the line of archers, men's eyes snap to his broad shoulders, narrow hips, easy, leonine gait. He is the man they wish they were: crowned with golden hair, a glint of knightly legends in his eye. If he claps a yeoman on the shoulder the honoured man thrills at the touch and knows that he has nothing to offer in return but his life's service. He will offer it gladly, now. 

This old spell rises in Fluellen's throat, tasting of bile and acid. If he could believe again, if he could slip back into his comforting, blinding certainty, he might be able to die in peace. 

_I never met a girl at Scarborough Fair..._

Fluellen has always been profoundly different, his soul ill fitted to the general fellow feeling expected of soldiers. Little wonder while he collects stories then, memorizing them to carry with him. 

_I never met a girl at Scarborough Fair..._

No girl, no family, no ties to fallible people over safe ideals. But the King is a person, just as sure as the laughing girl a more usual sort of man would find, and Fluellen can't hold himself above the lust-driven masses any more. 

And it would be a betrayal to deny Gower.


End file.
